24. The Medieval Bare Boob Fad
King Charles VII of France was completely besotted with his mistress Agnes Sorel (1422 – 1450), who bore him four daughters. A stunner who deserved her nickname, “The Lady of Beauty”, Sorel was the first famous French royal mistress. She throve in the limelight, reveled in being the center of attention, and went out of her way to ensure that she became and remained a constant subject of gossip. One way she did that was by walking around with one naked boob hanging out. It was the start of a medieval fashion fad that, for better or worse, did not last.
Sorel’s sense of style was widely imitated. That led a prominent bishop to denounce the new fad of “front openings through which ones sees the teats, nipples, and breasts of women“. Many of the contemporaries who praised Sorel’s beauty also denounced her as a “bad example to modest and honest women“. She could afford to ignore them, because the one person who mattered the most, King Charles, was head over heels in love with her. However, Sorel was more than just an attention-seeking bimbo. For example, she used her influence over the otherwise weak Charles VII to encourage him to resist the invading English, then rampaging through France.
